Hitchcock

Synopsis: The story of the development, production and reception of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho…

Review: It’s a shame because the story of the conception and evolution of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho could have proved cinematic gold-dust in the right hands, but Sacha Gervasi is saddled with such desperately poor raw materials that any of that inherent potential is completely obscured by the lamest of lame scenarios.

What’s ironic is that Psycho was such a radical, cinematographically novel film, but Gervasi is completely unable to find a meta-referential way of honouring that – instead wrapping his own work up in some of the dullest storytelling tropes imaginable. The sum total of the film’s dramatic ‘conceits’ are Hitchcock receiving ghostly visitations from Ed Gein (the ‘inspiration’ behind the story of Psycho) and Hitchcock’s wife, Alma, developing a platonic friendship with an aspiring screenwriter. Both of these are so half-hearted and apologetic ‘conflicts’ that they’re almost laughable, and one is left with the distinct impression that the producers assumed that simply basing a film around the pop-culturally rich subject matter of Psycho and populating it with a bevy of star names, would be enough….(March 2014)